Global Coherence

The challenges of global coherence are immense with continuing stagnating growth, historic levels of unemployment, a declining wage share and attacks on social protection, where it exists. Inequality is growing, the wage share of national income is among the lowest in history and the rapid expansion of supply chains as the dominant model of trade is impoverishing workers. Increasing levels of precarious work, informality and workplace safety are major issues for unions everywhere.

The ITUC is addressing these issues by campaigning for policies that put investment in jobs and creating demand through fair wages and social protection at the heart of economic growth and social justice.

Global Coherence•News

Amid a downgrade of global growth projections to their lowest levels since the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are pushing deregulatory structural reform. Working people in Ecuador and around the world are resisting this dangerous mix of austerity, deregulation, and attacks on labour rights.

An ambitious action programme, focused on peace, defending democracy and workers’ rights, achieving a new social contract and ensuring climate action based on just transition, has been adopted by the ITUC’s annual General Council meeting which concluded in Brussels on 17 October.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is calling on governments to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), on the eve of a special signing ceremony for the Treaty at the UN in New York this week. The Treaty was adopted by the UN in July 2017, with a vote of 122-1, and requires ratification by 50 countries for it to come into force. So far 70 countries have signed it and 26 have completed ratification.

The ITUC has joined international condemnation of the Chilean government’s repressive crackdown of a demonstration in Santiago yesterday. Trade unionists were among those targeted by police aggression and arrests in the aftermath of Thursday’s peaceful demonstration.

The ITUC has warned that new trade rules currently being tabled would place severe restrictions on governments’ ability to regulate in the interests of working people. The proposals, which come under the banner of the “e-commerce agenda”, have far-reaching implications on the future world of work.